ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Specular holography

Have you ever seen a sparkly sticker or glittery paint that looks shiny when you move it around? That's because it reflects light differently depending on which angle you look at it from. Specular holography is a way to make a picture or image that does the same thing!

Imagine you have a piece of plastic that's completely clear and smooth. If you shine a laser at it from one side, the laser light will bounce off and create a reflection on the opposite side. But if you change the angle of the laser, the reflection will move too!

Now, let's say you want to make a hologram of a cat using this clear plastic. You would start by shining two lasers at the plastic from different angles. When the laser light beams meet and cross over each other, they create an interference pattern. This pattern is like a special code that captures all the information about the cat's shape and appearance.

Then, you would shine a third laser at the interference pattern. The third laser causes the pattern to light up and create the cat hologram. But because the interference pattern is coded to reflect light differently at different angles, the holographic cat will look shiny and sparkly, just like the glittery sticker!

So, in summary, specular holography is a way to make images that reflect and sparkle when you move them around. It works by creating a special code using laser light and then using that code to shine a hologram onto a clear plastic material.